Is Antarctica Home of the Next Miracle Drug?: BIG PICS

When biochemist Bill Baker drops beneath the ice in Antarctica, he resembles a medicine man of the sea, searching among kelp, corals, and sponges for strange new life forms that could be the next miracle cure.

"When we go into the field, we're looking to find anything cool-looking," he recently told Discovery News. "Anything brightly-colored, or that stands out from the rest, that's got to have a lot of flags that make you say 'maybe there's something cool going on in here.' It's like being a kid in a candy shop. I've got to have it."

Back in his lab at the University of South Florida, childlike-curiosity turns to a scientist's zeal for minutia. Baker and his team test chemicals from a menagerie of exotic specimens against everything from lethal drug-resistant bacteria to HIV to cancer cells, looking for signs of activity. Thousands of compounds tick by with no results.

Then suddenly, a hit: cancers cells turn up dead, bacteria vanishes, viruses lie shattered by potent toxins they never saw coming.

In the tissue of the kelp Gigartina skottsbergii Baker has found chemicals that have broad antiviral properties. Marine plants from the genus Gigartina are already used in natural medicine supplements as a flu fighter. But over-the-counter products haven't undergone rigorous clinical testing.

Baker's tests show that the protein from G. skottsbergii is particularly effective against the H1N1 "swine flu" strain, among others. It doesn't kill the virus directly, but disrupts its ability to infect healthy cells, which could prove immensely valuable as a treatment to prevent people from getting sick in the first place.

A similar protein, derived from a red algae in New Zealand has been found to attack HIV, SARS, and Ebola viruses in a similar way. It is now being cultivated in large amounts in tobacco plants in preparation for widespread clinical trials.

It's a long way from discovery of a promising chemical to bringing a miracle drug to market, though; the process can take decades.

"To actually find a compound that ends up in a clinic is a once in a lifetime opportunity," Baker said. "And quite honestly we may never get one."

But one of the most promising class of chemicals the team has found are palmerolides, which occur in sea sponges (pictured above is the sponge Synoicum adaraenum). These toxins, which Bakers suspects sponges produce as a defense mechanism against predators, are devastating to a wide range of cancers, including notoriously deadly melanomas.

Despite the long odds of finding the next blockbuster drug in the frigid waters of Antarctica, Baker is confident that diligent searching will ultimately yield life-saving results.

"We're just scratching the surface in Antarctica," he said, adding that so far he and his team have only been able to perform a detailed search in the area around Palmer Station. Most of the continent's coastal waters are too remote and inaccessible to study.

The search becomes dizzying when you consider, as Baker does, that any unexplored ecosystem on the planet -- whether sponges far off in Antarctica or insects in a suburban lawn -- could be harboring the next great medical miracle.

"We need to go further afield, deeper into the ocean to find these chemicals," he said. "But they could also be right in your back yard."

Images: Bill J. Baker, University of South Florida